Spoiler Warning Fallout 3 #2:
Home Run Derby

By Shamus Posted Thursday May 6, 2010

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 131 comments

The call for subtitles, less grouchy banter, and less Josh talking have been heard. Unfortunately, we have two more episodes before those suggestions will come into effect.

But I’m glad we did so many episodes in advance, since Josh recently had a series of personal computing disasters that ended in him ordering a new machine. If we didn’t have the episodes done ahead of time, we would have nothing for you next week. But thanks to our foresight and planning ahead, we’ll be able to give you two more episodes of rambling, crosstalk, and no subtitles.

 


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131 thoughts on “Spoiler Warning Fallout 3 #2:
Home Run Derby

  1. pffh says:

    Viddler won’t let me log in so I’ll just post here. You can close the menu while stuff like the note from dad is playing and it will continue playing.

  2. Sekundaari says:

    If you haven’t already done the radiation thing, it sure could use a montage of drinking from every available water source. Crater, sink, toilet, bottle… Radroach meat too.

    I was hoping you’d let Amata demonstrate her gun skills, but the awesome VATS-death of the overseer definitely makes up for that. I did the same thing as Josh, read the Overseer’s terminal notes and found Megaton as my first outside location.

    1. Factoid says:

      I always just go stand in the bomb puddle for a minute or two. It wouldn’t exactly make for titilating viewing though, because I think the highest you can get up to is a few rads per second, so it takes at least 2 or 3 minutes of soaking in that spot to get irradiated up to 600…but at least you don’t waste time running to various places just to get irradiated faster and then come all the way back.

      1. Irridium says:

        I stood in the water and drank it at the same time.

        For me my radiation bar skyrocketed.

        1. Sekundaari says:

          This is the thing I do too ;)

          It works very well, but a montage could be more amusing. Though you could see this as roleplaying a Church of the Atom fanatic.

        2. Dodds says:

          That’s probably the quickest way to do it. I prefered to walk over to the Super-Duper Mart then swim from there to Rivet City. Quickest and safest way to get there and hey, you don’t need to worry about the Radiation.

      2. Rutskarn says:

        There’s a bathroom nearby. Just spend, like, five minutes drinking from the same toilet.

        1. Andrew says:

          This is usually my plan. Although it’s kind of hard to explain what sort of person would drink irradiated greenish-brown toilet water for the sake of a questionably scientific experiment.

  3. James Pony says:

    I’d like to bring the attention back to the improbable free money that the Pre-War Money is. It weights nothing and has generous value compared to how easy it is to find.
    I actually ignore many valuable items because their weight makes them less profitable than Pre-War Money. For example, I only bother with Cartons of Cigarettes in early game when I want to quickly establish a buffer fund or in late game when I have Intense Trained strenght to 10 and have Strong Back IF I’m really desperate for cash.

    That is, when I don’t cheat myself 50000 lbs max carry weight.

    Interestingly enough, I’m kind of bothered by the weightless ammo, because in Fallouts 1, 2 and Tictacs, you need to plan some with your ammo, but it’s very handy because you can still sell ammo, and weightless goods are worth way more than their weight in caps.
    It’s also in contrast to STALKER where you have a very limited carry weight, ammo weights probably roughly what it weights in reality, but it’s offset by bullets not doing video game damage instead of realistic damage, meaning that whereas a “real” STALKER would probably be fine with 10-12 magazines of 5,56 (300-360 rounds), same -2 of 7,62×39 (240-300) or 200 rounds of 7,62×51/54, even with all the crazy mutants, bandits and armored STALKERS, you have to shoot at the same mutant or hostile STALKER for quite some time unless you hit the head.

    Maybe Fallout 3 is smarter in this regard as a game, because it’s atleast somewhat consistently unrealistic rather than player-punishingly selective like STALKER, which is more simulationist in some parts but more gamey in others.
    For example, in Fallout 3 you can carry all the ammo you can find, but you might have to shoot at a mutant for a good while to kill it, but in STALKER you have to make sure you don’t have too much ammo, but then need a few full magazines at full auto to a single mutant’s head to kill it.

    And you should totally do Point Lookout, even if just a guided tour instead of doing any of the quests, because I’m interested in your opinions of it as a part of a Fallout game.

    Also, why do you choose to use the first-person view instead of the third-person view?

    Edit: Oh hey look I don’t need my own blog, all I have to do is post comments on Shamus’!

    1. Factoid says:

      Pre-war money is the best stuff ever, because it’s everywhere and you can use it as ammo in the Rock-It launcher. Since all items do the same amount of damage regardless of their actual mass, pre-war money is the ideal ammunition since it’s a) free, b) everywhere and c) weightless

      That said I rarely carried my Rock-It Launcher around with me because I rarely have played heavy weapons characters. It makes a nice back-up weapon if you are one though.

    2. Michael says:

      Yeah, the ammo soaking abilities off all the enemies was one of the things that annoyed me the most about Clear Sky. To my recollection Shadow of Chernobyl only pulls that with mutants. Of course the guns in SoC shoot sideways… so there’s really no winning.

    3. M the cheddar Monk says:

      Fallout TicTacs huh? Sounds like a strange game, in which you play as a TicTac.

  4. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Why do you leave the vault anyway?Its a bit of a lazy plot hook because you cant just cooperate with the overseer.He is your dad,but he is a jerk.So why would you follow in his footsteps?

    Oh,and I too ended in the school on my first playthrough.Follow the yellow brick road.

    In a brown place,there is a brown town,with a brown woman whose name is brown.

  5. Josh R says:

    I ended up in megaton first, read and explored everything in the vault before leaving. Also just took off rightwards to start.
    Don’t really understand the claim that the game world is tiny… I found it huge…
    I also always used to trade off gear for more useful gear and caps, makes it easier then just visiting lots of different shops.

  6. Valaqil says:

    I like the idea of playing the DLC since I only played Steel/Lookout from the same DLC pack. Point Lookout didn’t seem that long to me, FWIW. I am curious how much of the optional quests you’ll complete since that is what will really lengthen this series.

    On my first play, I did the _same_ thing about following the road: I started going to the right, and got ambushed by raiders over the hill (Dead). Then I followed the road to the left to the school and found the raiders (Dead). Then, somehow!, I missed the turn to Megaton after reading about it online and … drumroll please … spent the better part of an hour following the road and not knowing where the heck I was. It was terrible, but it did create one thing in me. I started really thinking about the mindset of being “new to the wasteland”. I had little ammo or food, and was getting lost/attacked VERY often. I was pretty paranoid for a while, and I liked it.

    One of my favorite things about the Wasteland Survival Guide is the random encounter that happens once the book is complete. I’ll leave it at that.

  7. RTBones says:

    First play through, ended up at Silver’s. Then the school. After having my rear end handed to me on the proverbial silver platter and slogging through the school, I retraced my steps all the way to the Vault, where I met my first trade caravan. Then back down the hill, and eventually saw the sign to Megaton.

    I had accomplished very little, was low on ammo and food, every time I ventured away from the initial ruins I got jumped by moles or dogs or some manner of creature that wanted me dead, and it was awesome.

    1. KremlinLaptop says:

      I ended up at Silver’s too. The annoying thing is her dialogue seems to assume Moriarty sent you and your choices seem to reflect that, if I recall correct. Meaning when I talked to her for the first time I felt like I’d sort of broken some guest and I had no clue who this Moriarty was.

      So I shot her, went to the school. Proceeded to spend about three in game nights slogging through it picking off raiders and clearing the place. I fairly sure the first place I got to was Areatu or whatever that highway settlement is called, at least I found the trader near there to sell all my stuff to and so forth. From there I found, I think, Little Big Town and eventually… Paradise Falls? Yeah, the slave trader place.

      …Yeah, my sense of direction sort of sucks. By the time I first got to Megaton I must have been around level five or so and kitted out pretty bad-ass. The game was pretty fun ’til I started playing it right.

      1. acronix says:

        Your sense of location doesn´t suck, it´s just that the game does a pathetic job to point you to Megaton. If you don´t read the overseer notes, you don´t get the mark on the map. There´s also a easy to miss sign near the road.
        If you try to locate it just by watching carefully around you when out of the vault, you won´t see it, because it just looks like a big building, and you have alredy other big buildings in sight.

        On my first playtrough, I too found up Silver first, and then passed a whole in-game week (maybe more, it felt like a week though) looking for a merchant. Didn´t found one until I got to Rivet City. Bethesda´s so good designing enviorements that they forget to make important locations obvious..

      2. Hugo Sanchez says:

        Ha, That happened to me the first time to. I went into Silver’s house. She started talking like i knew who Moriarity was and such. I panicked, and killed her. I stepped into the school for a second, got shot at, ran back out. Ended up at the vault entrance. I then went over to the overlook. Saw Megaton, Headed there.

  8. KremlinLaptop says:

    OBJECTION.

    The new vault design has the doors open inwards. INWARDS. They used to open outwards, out of a slot the teeth they roll along a track on sinking into slots in the wall to seal the vault. Now they open inwards…

    And this really annoys me. It’s the first thing that really annoyed me. It annoyed me on the “This was already established, this worked on the west coast so why is it different here? Why did you need to change this?” level. The worst thing is that it makes less sense than the original design if you think about it.

    I mean which of these designs is going to be better at withstanding the overpressure caused by a nuclear shockwave, the one where the door needs to be blasted out or the one where the door can be blasted into the vault?

    The only benefit I see is that if something broke on the mechanism or the track the door moves along got blocked somehow than the inwards opening design would be better.

    So yeah. Nerd rage.

    1. eri says:

      They tried to explain it away by saying the 100-series of Vaults was a new design.

      Or something.

      Basically, the only reason Bethesda set the game on the East Coast was so that they could ruin the canon as much as they wanted, and then say “hey, well, it’s far away, so technically it doesn’t contradict anything!” Of course, they still fucked it up anyway.

      1. KremlinLaptop says:

        Indeed. For me, personally, the worst example of this has to be the Brotherhood of Steel who went from a very interesting idea for an organization in the first two games that was presented more as true-neutral, to being these irritating lawful-stupid-goodies in F3.

        Also power armour being useless. That was annoying too.

        1. Sekundaari says:

          Surely you can find worse examples than the BoS? This apparent change was explained rather thoroughly: The East Coast Brotherhood of Steel are renegades no longer supported by the California BoS, and those who disagreed (loyal to the original cause) rebelled and became the “Outcasts”. (Explanation by the lead designer.) For me this is good enough.

          1. eri says:

            While it is explained, it’s also a cheap cop-out. Bethesda’s design for the East Coast Brotherhood isn’t one that came naturally out of writing; they wanted to have a powerful and benevolent faction to drive their story along, and rather than, say, creating something new, they retrofit the Brotherhood to fit that need, which was both lazy and totally ignorant of the Brotherhood as it had been established in canon. It’s the same excuse for everything – “oh, it’s on the East Coast, they did things differently there”. That’s just bad writing, period.

            Here is what really differentiates Fallout 3 from the previous Fallout games for me. Fallout 1 and 2 have logical game worlds, whose people, settlements, locations, power dynamics, agriculture, trade relations, etc. are all products of their history and post-nuclear environment. Everything about them is, if not totally plausible, at least reasonable given the circumstances, with perhaps the exception of New Reno in Fallout 2 (but it’s not too awful, in concept; they just got carried away a bit). To put it simply, the world is built, and then its inhabitants are built on top of that, and then its situations and conflicts between them follow. This means the world and everything in it is both believable and highly compelling, because it offers something we can understand as functional, but also quite different. The devil is in the details; without them, Fallout would lack that extra level of intrigue that maost games only vaguely hint at.

            Contrary to that, Fallout 3 was designed entirely the other way around. Bethesda essentially took what they were good at – open world games – and grafted Fallout’s aesthetic elements on top of it. This isn’t conjecture: watch some of their behind-the-scenes footage and read a few interviews, and it’s quite clear that the way Bethesda makes games involves imagining “cool” situations for the player, then justifying them well after the fact. This is why Fallout 3 has exploding cars, portable nuke catapults, giant laser cannons, orbital satellites, stories-tall robots, and an environment with a hundred times more Raiders than there are regular people – they were all dreamed up during brainstorm sessions, without regard for whether they really fit the canon at all. When it comes time to explaining them, it’s not a process of logical justification, so much as it is a process of sweeping under the rug and glossing over.

            While this works in some cases – The Elder Scrolls lends itself to this simply because you can say A Wizard Did It and go on – it doesn’t work in the Fallout universe, because right from the beginning, Fallout has been all about an alternate version of a 1950s ideal world plunged into chaos, where people are basically the same as they are know, but the political leaders are just a bit more bone-headed and maniacal than normal, and the technology is fundamentally quite different. It’s a world that operates according to the same principles which govern our own world, only slightly altered and exaggerated, and as a result, every single detail of that world can be, and is, interrogated. This happens outside the game, by fans, but it also happens even more often within the game itself, by the characters who inhabit that world. This is precisely why Fallout feels so realistic – it’s a plausible universe, with characters who don’t just exist within it as gameplay mechanics, but as meta-commentators who are able to mirror, anticipate and respond to the player’s own engagement with the game.

            I apologise if that was a bit overlong or analytical, but I hope at least someone read it. I’ve been trying to articulate that about both Fallout and game design in general for a long while.

            1. Sekundaari says:

              Yeah, I read it. Interesting read too, but I don’t think the difference between the games is that drastic. Sure, the approach in the first two is more bottom-up. And the third one has problems with agriculture and the timing of the war with its top-down approach. I’m still fairly sure I’ve killed far more raiders and caravan guards and other assorted thugs (mainly in random encounters) than seen other people in Fallout 2.

              Then again, maybe for me the gameplay justifies the setting. I enjoy the closer look into the world and more seamless combat, and the interface of course.

            2. KremlinLaptop says:

              I second this. These are pretty much exactly the thoughts I have on F3, except presented with a lot less cussin’ and a lot more clarity.

    2. Rutskarn says:

      Or, you know, that they wanted you to have a more dramatic view of the vault door opening. Either one.

      1. KremlinLaptop says:

        So what you’re really saying is that if F3 was 3D isometric in view, like it dang well should be, then the original vault door design would be plenty dramatic.

        /smugnerd (No really, I used to post frequently at NMA — I could go on for ages)

        1. Rutskarn says:

          On the one hand, yes. On the other hand…while I would never malign the first Fallout game, it’s far more intense to watch the vault opening from first person.

        2. ps238principal says:

          Are there any games currently being made that are in isometric 3-D?

          And it’s not that great a format. Finding a pixel-sized object on a screen is a PITA, and often doors or other objects would be obscured by buildings, revealable only if you happen to make your 1-inch “aura” cover them while walking behind them.

          1. Kerezteny says:

            The Age of Decadence at Iron Tower Studios is going to be isometric and 3D, and it looks like they’re going to make it work. Been looking forward to this for a couple of years.

            And uh, that whole pixel-hunting thing was fixed years ago. Baldur’s Gate 2 used Tab to highlight all clickable objects, and many games have since followed. It may have been used before that, even, but that’s the first time I saw it.

          2. Michael says:

            Diablo 3, I think. CivV. I’m not sure, but Starcraft 2 might be.

  9. X2-Eliah says:

    Well, nice to see this picking up – I just started F3 after a lengthy time-out,and it is very nice to see everything you do with my own actions in fresh memory, makes for a good comparison.

    One thing I’d like to say (more than the rest), please don’t make the episodes any shorter. F3 is so long, you need that half-an-hour to 45 minutes per episode to even make it to the DLCs..

    Either way, the cross-talking isn’t really a bothersome thing – Shamus is quick to let Rutskarn talk, and nobody is intentionally shouting over the other.. yet.

    One thing I do wish you guys did is to take the jerk/jackass routes to conversations, now you are doing them in a very neutral-good way most of the time, which may be good for roleplaying for yourself, but is less interesting for the audience.. Besides, everyone has played the game as a good character, not everyone – as a stupid one.

    1. someguy says:

      “Besides, everyone has played the game as a good character, ”

      Yeah, Megaton survived three times so far. Quite absurd, somehow :)

      1. Hugo Sanchez says:

        I can never justify blowing up Megaton. It’s cool, and i get a swanky place to live, but, let’s face it. I find LOTS of crap out in the wastes, and sometimes, the merchants at Tenpenny Tower and Rivet City just aren’t enough.

    2. Vipermagi says:

      Ah, confirmation. I really am the only one who plays evil :P
      I generally make Good characters as joke characters (1 Str/End Melee was a lot of fun), and tend to go a little neutral because some NPCs really get on my nerves (+1 bullet to the brain), or the evil path has better rewards (Harold’s quest).

      1. Groboclown says:

        I really need to go back and play this one again. My only play through was as “psychotic killer”, which actually had a really neat side-effect.

        See, there’s a bug in Megaton where you can kill and steal and do whatever you want, but once you kill the villain of the town (can’t recall his name off hand – runs the whorehouse), everyone’s friendly to you.

        So, in my play through, the only residents of the town are the trader and the child of the sheriff.

        1. Vipermagi says:

          You can massacre a town, wait three in-game days, and everyone forgets. I use that godawful mechanic to get easy cash. The Rivet City guards have decent loot, and the one out by the bridge is an easy kill. He dies every time I leave Rivet City >:) (and yes, I realise they are random and can thus also be female. Equality like and such as; they die as well.

    3. RTBones says:

      Also not worried with the cross-talking. Or Josh talking.

      Have to chime in here with another call to keep the episode times up (30-45 min), at least for F3. F3 is a long game, and I (err…we, your readers and audience) enjoy watching you make decisions in the game that we might or might not have (I didnt kill the Overseer, but did threaten him. Then again, I was also hoping Amata was going to come along for the ride. Oh well.) Hoping you are going to do at least a few of the side quests and go after some bobbleheads, in addition to the DLC. All of that takes time.

      I guess what I am saying is that we like it, and we want more. :)

      EDIT: Hmmm, not sure why my post attached to this comment, should have been one from above. Oh well, points stand.

    4. Valaqil says:

      I’ve heard it said that Fallout games are _intended_ to be played as evil/jerk/indifferent. I’m not sure if I agree, but they’re definitely funnier that way.

      1. FFJosh says:

        I’m still miffed that you can’t set your intelligence to 1 and play through the game with dialogue that makes you feel like you’re really dumb like the last two games. That would make a fun playthrough.

        As for me playing “evil” rather than “neutral,” in my defense, there aren’t a lot of good evil options in the Vault (and I actually really like the Officer Gomez character). But I think you’ll see the chaotic stupid ramp up as we progress through the wasteland in the next few episodes…

      2. krellen says:

        I find that unlikely; Fallout 2, at the very least, seems to assume the Vault Dweller was basically good.

      3. guy says:

        I’d say it’s more accurate to say that they’re designed to accomodate being played that way.

        1. eri says:

          This is an excellent distinction. One massive difference between Fallout 1 and 2, and Fallout 3, is that the first two games are all equally rewarding and valid to play through no matter what path you pick: the world reacts accordingly. Fallout 3 (and Bethesda games in general) tends to assume you are going to be a patron saint, and the only options for “evil” characters exist tend to exist just for evil’s sake. You can’t justify them with rewards, or with power, or with progressing in the game – the reason they are there are so that you can be an asshole, and nothing more. BioWare also tends to take this route, but they have been getting better at it – Jade Empire, for example, gives the “evil” path a philosophical justification that is arguably just as valid as the “good” one.

          1. KremlinLaptop says:

            I really enjoyed the explanations of the differences between the way of the Open Palm and the Closed Fist by that one guy at the start of Jade Empire. However, I can’t really think of anywhere in the game where that spirit was really reflected convincingly and it felt more like Biowares usual fair between good/evil, which was a bit disappointing.

            Granted, it has been ages since I played Jade Empire. Very good game, though.

    5. KremlinLaptop says:

      Gotta admit, I miss Randy’s Stupid-Evil-Chaotic style of playing. Josh is just way too nice sometimes.

    6. acronix says:

      I hope you people realize than in this game, evil is sometimes what some of all would call the “good option”, most of the time because the good option is idiotic.

      1. Winter says:

        Anyone could punch out a reporter. Indeed, you could even make it sound like a reasonable thing to do.

        But Randy can really sell it. Not everyone has a special sixth sense that tells them when someone needs to get punched in the face, even when they’re all the way on the other side of the galaxy.

        (Not trying to harsh on Josh, mind you. Randy has a special talent…)

  10. someguy says:

    Ah. Makes me really want to continue my 3rd playthrough.
    The first time I think, after stepping out of the vault (yup, one of the big “Wow”s of computer gaming), I consciously chose to ignore Megaton and take a closer look at the wasteland instead. Result: immediate death at the supermarket. Which made me “better check out this Megaton for now”. Result: Moira telling me to get supplies from where? Oh,…

    (Watching the video, especially while not really paying attention, nicely illustrates my one big gripe with the game, though: the constant hassle with the Pip-Boy gets, indeed, terribly annoying)

  11. Wilcroft says:

    The symbol on the bat is a spoof/knock off of a Rawlings bat.
    http://www.rawlingsgear.com/products/PRO302M_lg.jpg as an example

  12. Weimer says:

    This LP is actually more fun than my actual playthrough of the game… Odd.

    Moira seems like a fuzzy mother, who has taken one too many blows to the head. Adorable, yet batshit insane.

    Sidenote: I didn’t mind it, but Josh seemed to blurt out awfully many F-bombs during this one.

    1. Factoid says:

      I noticed it too. Likewise I’m not at all offended by profanity…it just stuck out for some reason, I think because there was not a lot of profanity in the ME series.

      No need to clean up the language on my account, though. I’m a fan of “bad” language.

  13. Peter H. Coffin says:

    Aww… I kinda LIKE the grouchy banter. The only thing that bugs me about the style is mostly out of your hands with regard to this particular set-up: the delay between the hosting player (who’s realtime) and eveyone else (who seems to have 2-3 seconds at minimum before their comments actually come back through the audio.

    1. Factoid says:

      Yeah, I think this setup is really difficult in that regard. I think Skype would probably have a much better delay for the audio and as long as everyone has a good connection it generally sounds great for group recordings, but ultimately there will still be the uStream delay.

      1. FFJosh says:

        Yeah, the voice delay isn’t really the problem, it’s the stream–Shamus and Rutskarn can’t react to something before they see it.

        So I guess what I’m saying is, Shamus and Rutskarn need to become Jedi.

  14. eri says:

    Sorry guys, waste of a perk. All the perks that add skill points are typically useless, since there are more than enough skill points in the game to max you out. Should have gone for a perk with a unique bonus, like Lady Killer.

    1. Vipermagi says:

      That is, if you collect all bobbleheads, have at least 6 Int and take Educated. The bobbleheads alone are 130 skill points. I don’t know if they’re going to spend 3 episodes collecting them, or get them in between episodes.

      Other than that; Early game benefit. In the beginning you want to increase many skills; Lockpick, Science, Melee, perhaps Speech if you like the easy way out. A few points in Barter, perhaps some Small Guns/Explodings for backup… and you only have ~15 skill points every level. A perk yielding you +10 skill points is a big help.

      1. Factoid says:

        I disagree completely. I think in the beginning of the game it’s important to focus on ONE skill and build it up fast.

        I generally find my playthroughs MUCH more enjoyable if I just pick a skill like Small Weapons or Melee and sink all my skill points for my first couple of levels into it.

        It’s really tough if I want energy weapons though (which I usually do) because ammo for those is very scarce early on. I’ve learned where the easy stashes are though. I usually hit up the grocery story to pick up an easy laser pistol and then hoof it to Rivet City so I can buy energy cells from the gun dealers. It’s a pain to have to quick travel to Rivet all the time for ammo when I’m still doing quests in Megaton, but it’s better than wasting skill points in weapons I will never user.

        1. Factoid says:

          And then just the other day I start a new playthrough as a Melee character…and Moira suddenly has 150 energy cells for sale to a level 2 character.

          I don’t think I’ve ever seen her with that kind of loot until much later in the game, or if I sell it to her first.

  15. krellen says:

    On the subject of brown:

    I live in the middle of a desert. The area around the city is way less uniform, drab and just pure brown than most shooters I’ve seen. I keep hearing people use the excuse “real life is brown!” to justify those scenes, but the evidence sitting right out my window in an area that should be “brown” proves just how wrong that is.

    And Fallout 3 takes place in the DC area. Radiation or not, that landscape should be pretty darn green 200 years after the bombs. At the very least there’d be grasses and lichen everywhere.

    Take this image for example; this is Pripyat, the city next to Chernobyl, only twenty years after the disaster. That’s what I expected to see leaving the vault.

    1. swimon says:

      In most games I would agree with you, the real world isn’t brown and I don’t really see the point of them overusing that colour.

      In fallout 3 however I sort of like it even if it make some unfortunate visibility problems. Fallout 3 clearly has nothing to do with reality and the brown is just a visual aesthetics thing, which I kinda like here as it is used consistently and in a sort of humorously over the top manner like all the destruction in the game. That said it clearly isn’t without problems and it is rather tiring after a while.

    2. Jarenth says:

      I just assumed the brown landscape everywhere was a nod to the first two Fallout games.

    3. Heron says:

      That’s why the Green World mod makes Fallout 3 so much better.

      1. ps238principal says:

        Sometimes. It gets out of hand in places. In an underground area in Point Lookout, if you didn’t know someone to talk to was where he was from a previous playthrough, you wouldn’t have known to walk through the treetops obscuring everything.

    4. Irridium says:

      Indeed. Thats why I downloaded the blue skies mod and that mod that adds grass/trees.

      And I live in Vermont, a very forested area. Even on very cloudy days and everything seems grey, color pops up from everywhere.

      Bah, I’m sick of all this brown and grey…

    5. ehlijen says:

      I’m fairly certain they tried to emulate the pervading desert feel from Road warrior and the first two games. But as was already said, even those weren’t all brown, brown and sand is just what you remember most from them and thus became the most obvious thing to emulate.

    6. Klay F. says:

      The only difference is that Chernobyl was just a big radiation leak, whereas in Fallout 3, Several dozen NUCLEAR BOMBS hit. Nuclear explosions generate enough heat to turn dirt into glass. This analogy holds absolutely no water.

  16. swimon says:

    I can see how it could be annoying that the game doesn’t really lead you to Megaton but personally I liked it. I lost my way completely wandered around the wasteland trying to survive while getting my ass handed to my by raiders and scorpions and I think it added a lot to the game. Sure it was a bit annoying but it added a sense of danger to the game. That danger in turn made the exploration better since it made the world mysterious. It’s unfortunate that after such a short while the game stops being threatening in the least which makes it about as mysterious as Oblivion :E.

    On a side note: I loved Moira Brown, she is easily the best character in the game with her endlessly sunny personality. She provides a nice contrast to how depressing the world is supposed to be. Also she is the sort of character Bethesda can write well, the charismatic loony (Sheogorath being the best example).

    1. Jarenth says:

      I’m guessing the people of Bethesda feel the same as you, then, because you can’t even blow that woman up.

    2. Miral says:

      Yeah. She’s just so endlessly cheerful about repeatedly sending you to your DOOM. Somehow I can’t hate her for that ;)

    3. acronix says:

      I find her voice to be annoying, and was one of the major reasons to evade her. However, the spanish voice-actor changed her personality completely, and went from “annoying crazy merchant” to “crazy optimistic merchant”.

  17. Conlaen says:

    I also miss Randy playing. You can tell Josh is really a goody two-shoes at heart, and thats the way I always paly my games too (in part because playing evil just makes the game harder a lot of times, for instance in Dragon Age, being evil will make you lose at least 2 party members and more if you’re roleplaying a particularly visious person).

    Randy had a certain, je-ne-sais-quoi. And he just seemed to pull of the evil bastard better.

    Also funny that with both episodes so far you end up calling the episode, and then end up going for a bit longer cause “we’ll just do this one thing”. :)

  18. eri says:

    I really, really hate these videos… not because of you guys, but because I never had such a negative opinion of Fallout 3 while playing it. I only really began to dislike it after playing the original Fallouts again, and seeing it from the outside lets all of the negative elements shine through.

    It’s just so obvious just how badly thought out everything in the game is. Everything from a lack of consistency in the game’s atmosphere/character designs/environments, to totally questionable universe and story elements, to the glaring bugs that show up within the first few minutes of playing, to the lack of game balance…

    Next to an RPG like Dragon Age, with solid writing and a very consistent universe, Fallout 3 is a train wreck – not to say Dragon Age is flawless, but it demonstrates just how broken and confused a game Fallout 3 is. It’s such a shame that DUDE YOU CAN SHOOT HIS HEAD OFF LOLOLO has taken precedence over intelligently-designed game worlds and characters with clear and logical motivations.

    1. Michael says:

      I’m not sure, the dark humor in Fallout 3 always struck me as more legitimately dark than the forced narrative of Dragon Age.

      I mean, on one hand you’re right, there is much better writing and game design out there, I just wouldn’t hold Dragon Age up against F3.

    2. GoodApprentice says:

      If Fallout 3 was a ride at the fair, it would be the bumpercars. Dragon Age, on the other hand, would be the ferris wheel.

  19. 4th Dimension says:

    Is their Repair that low, that they can’t repair items? Because, if it isn’t, why are they tossing items out instead repairing and thus gaining room and extra value.

    1. Miral says:

      I was wondering that too.

  20. far_wanderer says:

    I actually like the way the road to Megaton isn’t obvious. If you want to play the game realistically, then you follow the road and end up in a very dangerous place, which is realistic. If, on the other hand, you play the game as a game, then the giant quest arrow on your compass leads you directly there with no hassle.

    And to be fair, Megaton IS a giant wall of rust – the entire town is made of several-centuries-old irradiated airplane pieces.

    You mentioned going through all of the DLC, and I assume from your conversation that you’re doing the Wasteland Survival Guide, but how many of the other quests are you planning on doing? I’m curious because I’m fairly sure you already closed the return to the vault quest by killing the Overseer.

    1. Vipermagi says:

      You can still return when Amata’s daddy is smashed up against the wall with a critical Baseball to the head. Allen Mack takes over; the madman behind the window on the upper floor of the Atrium.

      1. Rutskarn says:

        Or, as I call him, “Doofy-Pastel-Hat-Guy.”

      2. acronix says:

        And he´s even worse, of course. Another facepunch to the player, like Bethesda loves to do!

        1. Michael says:

          He kinda works as an unintentional consequence, if you kill the overseer because either A its Fallout and the overseer is always evil, or B you’re doing it for the good of the vault.

  21. Zetal says:

    So you can do Fallout DLC, but you can’t do, say, Garrus’s quest from Mass Effect (that has the hilarious option of telling Garrus that he doesn’t get to kill the guy he’s been obsessing over for two years because you wanna do it first – and that’s the NEUTRAL option).

    Or Bring Down the Sky.

    ::glare::

    1. Friend of Dragons says:

      I’m betting that they will probably get tired of fallout before they actually do all that stuff…
      Or we the audience will… I feel like fallout 3’s lack of a good coherent story and whatnot will have the game getting old in rather less time than Mass Effect.

      1. Joe says:

        “…fallout 3’s lack of a good coherent story…”

        Yeah. I know that kind of turned me off of the fallout games.

        There is a main quest, but it really doesn’t have all that much to do with the game. It seems like the main quest exists only to provide a place where the game can end, rather than any sort of structure. I really like the way Bioware handles RPGs better, where everyone you meet is consistently tied to the main point of either the game, or at least whatever area they are in.

        Like in KoTOR II. You go to, say, Onderon. You find do what you need to do in order to get into the palace, in order to meet with the jedi there to advance the main quest in a spoiler-worthy way. You may have sidequests along the way, such as stopping a potential riot, or helping bust Mandalore’s friend out of jail, but most everything ties in with the main point of what you’re doing.

        Compare that with Fallout 3, where you’re main quest “find dad,” “aid project SPOILER,” etc, only exists as a way of dragging you throughout the capital wasteland and seeing the scenery. And it still makes you miss out on some of the best parts! I was especially fond of the community of escaped slaves who wanted to rebuild the Lincoln memorial.

        tl;dr. If the sidequests are more pervasive, well-written, and experience-relevant than the main quest, I’m not going to like your RPG. I’m not saying it won’t be good, but I won’t like it.

        1. acronix says:

          And don´t forget it makes you go trought the most stupid village in all history of videogames: Lil´ Lamplight, a.k.a. babytown!

          1. Friend of Dragons says:

            Indeed. It is very rare that I manage to go through there without introducing all those arrogant, condescending hotshot little punks to my minigun, even when I’m playing a normally good character.

        2. Kerezteny says:

          Honestly, I’d say Bioware is just as bad about sticking in quests that have nothing to do with the story. I always feel overwhelmed in their games because everyone is harassing me to do their fed-ex work.

          Your example of KOTOR2 is really the reason why I like Obsidian, who did KOTOR2 and NWN2 and are the ones working on New Vegas (which I tenatively look forward to). They’re very good at making sidequests that actually have something to do with the main quest, much better than Bioware is.

          1. Michael says:

            Something I’ve never understood, the Bioware fans who turn around and try to tear Obsidian to pieces one minute and then laud Bioware’s superiority by quoting HK-47 from Kotor2.

            Sorry, slight tangent there.

            1. Kerezteny says:

              HK-47 was originally from KotoR1. But I agree, I think people tend to hate on Obsidian just cause it isn’t Bioware, but I enjoyed their sequels much more than Bioware’s originals.

              1. Michael says:

                I can get people preferring NWN over NWN2, they’re different kinds of RPGs. The former is a kind of Diablo in D&D 3E, while NWN2 is a more party based game with an actual story.

                The stuff that really befuddles me are the ones that have been attacking Alpha Protocol as a ripoff of Mass Effect.

                EDIT: sorry, that may have been off topic.

                1. acronix says:

                  You should point them that Mass Effect is a ripoff of Jade Empire! And if they say “Well, it´s a game from the same developer” you just answer: “Yes, exaclty.”

                2. ps238principal says:

                  @acronix: Hell, most of ME is a rip-off of other sci-fi movies and TV shows, “Babylon-5” in particular (they just brought in the Shadows without the Vorlons, and made their motivations stupid, and instead of jumpgate tech that came from a bygone age, you had Mass Effect Drivers).

                  I saw “homage” stories that came from Alien, Star Trek, Star Wars, just about any popular show you care to name.

              2. Taellosse says:

                I’d like Obsidian better if they finished their games before releasing them. KotOR2 would have been a significantly better game than the original if they hadn’t shipped with the last quarter of the game missing. And NWN2 was so cripplingly broken with bugs when it shipped that I gave up on it when I was less than halfway through it. And I’ve never had the patience to start over now that they’ve largely fixed it with patches–I’ve tried several times. Besides which, I understand the ending is seriously terrible.

                Bioware is not without sin–the 1.0 version of NWN was almost as bug-filled as its sequel (I didn’t get into it until several patches were already released, though), and they are somewhat overly fond of repeating certain plots and themes. But I’ve enjoyed each of their games since NWN enough to play it through to the end at least once, if not 2 or 3 times.

                Obsidian has the potential to be a great studio, but they need to either get better at sticking to a release schedule, or have enough muscle when the publisher starts trying to force them to release too soon to push back.

                1. krellen says:

                  It’s the muscle thing that’s the problem. Despite the names on the roster, for some reason Obsidian just doesn’t get respect; BioWare gets three years to finish a game, and Obsidian gets two. That’s a serious handicap they work under, and they still create stuff at least as good as BioWare does.

                  Better, if you ask me.

            2. Joe says:

              Gorramit. Sorry, I always forget that the sequel was made by a different company.

              Palm… approaching… face… with… much… velocity…

          2. Friend of Dragons says:

            The difference to me is that while Bioware may have plenty of sidequests in their games, at least they are just there to help add depth to the world and provide something to do in addition to the main storyline.
            In contrast, Bethesda essentially has NOTHING other than sidequests.
            With a Bioware game, you can skip the sidequests and still get essentially the same experience out of the game, but if you just stick to the main story in a Bethesda game, you’re only going to see 5% of the entire game, and a very unsatisfactory 5% at that.
            You do have a point in that other studios often do a better job in adding relevance to their sidequests, however.

            1. Hugo Sanchez says:

              Personally, I like that the main questline isn’t that huge. It let’s you explore, and complete sidequests without having to worry about it. Also, Unlike say, Mass Effect, you don’t HAVE to even progress the story to do near-all of the sidequests. It gives you a LOT more freedom.

        3. Namaps says:

          That’s interesting, because I generally HATE games where all the side quests relate to the main plot. It makes the world seem empty, like all the characters and areas you can visit are just props to bump you along the story, like nothing at all is happening anywhere in the world except for the main quest.

  22. Kerezteny says:

    Watching these videos, something strikes me that didn’t the first time I played Fallout 3. The whole ‘1950’s’ thing was merely implied in the first game. There was a bit of a Cold War feel to it, but that was it. But in Fallout 3, it’s in your face constantly. It’s like Bethesda saw that Fallout 1 used an oldies song as their intro and the glowy green radiation and decided that it was supposed to be some sort of ‘edgy’ 1950’s-parody setting. There’s no subtlety to it.

    I guess it’s an odd thing to complain about, but it just adds to their completely unnatural, hamfisted writing.

    1. guy says:

      Uh, the 50’s feel was very prominent in the original fallout, at least concerning high technology. Like how Vault 13 had lots of terminals instead of PCs.

      1. Kerezteny says:

        I’m not denying it’s there, or even prominent, but it wasn’t slapped onto nearly every single thing in a completely stereotypical way. A culture developed from it, whereas Fallout 3 seems to have created a culture and then thrown on the 50’s stuff.

        Hm. I’m probably coming off as a bitter reactionary though. :S Maybe the original Fallouts were the same way and I’m just choosing not to see it. It’s been a couple of years since I last played, not counting Tactics.

        1. eri says:

          No, you’re definitely right. In the original Fallouts, the 1950s influence mostly came through in backstory as well as in environment design (architecture, clothing, posters and billboards, not to mention the cars). Fallout 3 tries to remind you of it at every turn, what with its giant foam crab monsters and 1950s-era hairstyles.

          1. Hugh says:

            To put it another way, the thematic thrust of Fallout 1 (and 2 I guess, but having not played it I’ll hedge my bets) was “Fifties America dreams about the future, but it turns into a nightmare and then reality in very quick sucession.”

            Fallout 3’s theme takes a different course: “Fifties America chills out in a Frigidaire box under a bridge sniffing glue for 200 years, then wanders about looking for a fight.”

    2. eri says:

      Bethesda has never been about subtlety. By contrast, Black Isle (and Obsidian) have always been ones to let the player figure things out for themselves based upon dropping hints. The one area, I have to admit, where Bethesda do a great job, is in using environment for storytelling… everything from the placement of NPCs, objects, vehicles, items, etc. can and is manipulated. There’s more emotion and poignancy in some of the abandoned townhouses around Fallout 3’s Washington DC than there is in the entire game’s main storyline.

      1. Kerezteny says:

        I agree completely. I don’t hate Bethesda, I just think they were -really- out of their element, and weren’t meant at all to make the next Fallout game. I’d love for a collaboration between Valve, for their work on atmosphere and level design, Obsidian, Interplay, and Bioware for their writing and character design, and Bethesda for their environments. Assuming there were no setbacks, no budget, and no time limit, that’d be the best game ever!

      2. GoodApprentice says:

        I also agree with this observation. The landscape plays such a big part in creating an emotional response in the player. I remember the first time I explored the town of Minefield. It was night, I was alone and stressed from collecting landmines, and the visual despair from the interiors and exteriors of the houses was deeply freaking me out. The skeletons of the former inhabitants and the static coming from the odd radio were also doing a number on my psyche. That’s great game design which affects you on a gut level and, like that blinding moment when you first step out of the vault, it sticks in your memory. You don’t get that strong of an emotional response while gaming in a linear, boxed-off environment.

        1. Smurfferdid says:

          I’ve felt the same way in those houses. I’ve also been quite creeped out in the subways systems. I’d hear the footsteps of a creature off in an area above me. And coupled with the ambient noises, and overall creepiness of the area I would get freaked out by a simple molerat walking out from behind a corner. Despite the crippling evidence of it’s forays into other genres not being RPGs (Wet) I believe bethesda would be quite capable of making a truely scary horror game.

      3. krellen says:

        Awesome. My constant Obsidian fanboying has finally taken hold on other commenters. Muahahahahaha!

    3. Tizzy says:

      You know, it occurs to me that it is very difficult to compare (fairly) the design decisions in Fallout 1/2 vs. Fallout 3. (Disclaimer: all I’ve seen of F3 are these videos).

      The originals were so lo-res that any detail is more suggested than really shown. There is no point talking about hairstyles for those games, for instance. So the atmosphere is in the mind of the player more than anything, and you realize that the technological limitations may have made the job easier.

      I think current technology is very unforgiving in that respect. You have such a great level of detail that anything slightly off will be picked up on and will ruin it.

      1. krellen says:

        You could just stop running on the graphics hamster wheel and realise that Fallout came out in an era post-Wolfenstein and DOOM, so it was isometric and sprite-based by choice, not technological necessity.

  23. Michael says:

    Anyone else notice they ended the video naked? I mean, they stripped off their armor and sold it to Moira.

    1. Volatar says:

      HAHAHAHAHA I totally did not notice that!

      1. Rutskarn says:

        And neither will we, until the next combat.

        Michael, you’re officially more observant than we are.

        1. Michael says:

          More that I’ve done it so many times, its something I passively watch for now.

  24. Ramsus says:

    If I decide to play the game again for some reason the way you guys whacked (literally) the Overseer is making me seriously considering playing a melee character. Then again I suppose it was only as awesome as it was because of the you – him- wall positioning.

    Have to agree about wondering exactly how all those radroaches got in there. I could see a couple. But the fact that there are like a couple dozen coupled with the fact that people have guns that they are trained to kill you with but still seem to get killed by a bunch of roaches was just baffling.

    Also gotta agree about the Bethesda townmaking problem. At first I was a bit overwhelmed simply because I couldn’t tell how to get around town properly but pretty soon I realized I could probably count the inhabitants of the entire “town” on my hands. I immediately had the same reaction you guys did to the coloring of the town. I was thinking “they’ve had this town for 200 years or whatever and they never found ANYTHING to paint with? Ever!?”

    1. Michael says:

      To be fair, there’s probably about 20 named NPCs in megaton, and about a dozen unnamed ones wandering around. But, your point stands.

    2. ps238principal says:

      The raiders took all the paint for their graffiti.

  25. evileeyore says:

    A few points:

    1 – I never seemed to sell as much stuff as you guys, I was constantly using the gear I accumulated to repair stuff. So I was only ever selling fairly well repaired goods… of course I always play through with repair as an important skill.

    2 – The first place I went out of the vault was to the bandit farm and overpass, which is almost rougher than the school. The school atleast had walls to duck around behind for good cover.

    However this wasn’t because I was lost, after all, you’ve got a freakin compass pointing you towards your objectives, but rather because I decided to search the immediate area around the vault spiraling out from it so I’d know where any dangers were should I be returning from an odd direction. The overpass has some great starting gear, if you can survive it.

    3 – You guys are doing fine. Don’t worry about talking over each other or the NPCs. I think your crosstalk is funny at times.

    Lastly – The only to make this better would be to get Yahtzee involved as a commentator. But then the universe probably couldn’t handle Shamus, Rutskarn, and Yahtzee all raggin on on a game and the player at the same time and it would aweplode.

    1. Hawkehunt says:

      Seconded – The crosstalk isn’t a problem for me except for when I can’t make out what’s going on in-game cos of the lack of subtitles.

  26. Hawkehunt says:

    Haven’t played any of the Fallout games, and don’t think I’m likely to any time soon, mainly for financial reasons, so I’m enjoying the look in.

    Bearing my unfamiliarity in mind, is there a reason Reginald “Melee” Cuftbert is running around with a gun so much?

    1. krellen says:

      The first two games are cheap. They can be acquired from GOG.com for $6 a piece.

    2. Michael says:

      The game kinda hands you guns and says “here, go wild” and expects you to use small guns early on.

  27. Klay F. says:

    Yeah, this Spoiler Warning series plus the comment threads are just going to end up being a “lets point out everything thats wrong with Bethesda” wank-fest.

    Not interested.

    1. Rutskarn says:

      I really prefer the term, “snarkfest.”

  28. Zaghadka says:

    Enjoyable. Thank you.

  29. Naelwyn says:

    I find the comment near the end about the vault’s genetic diversity very interesting, because that very point comes up later in a sidequest if you decide to do things non-violently in the beginning. (Err..)

    My general thoughts on Fallout3, since I’ve been interested enough by this to comment:

    It is most certainly what Oblivion should have been. If Bethesda had applied what they did with Fallout3 into their OWN setting the results would have been much better. Oblivion was just horribly immersion breaking, and F03 really does it much better.

    I found Fallout3 immersive and atmospheric enough that I did not look too closely at it and was rather fine with it as a game. Up until the point where I reached the end of the main quest. (I do not own the DLCs.) The ending without them is horribly done and inelegant in its approach, and it broke my immersion completely and radically altered my opinion about the rest of the game. When I later learned what Broken Steel did to the game, I immediately had the impression that they had planned to add Broken Steel from the beginning and deliberately separated it out in order to shill DLC.

    That being said, the game gets a lot of mileage out of player-made mods, some of which without I find the game impossible to play now.

    1. FFJosh says:

      The only problem I have with the idea that Broken Steel was originally supposed to be the true ending of the game, and was cut for time (and/or money); is that they released it after releasing two other DLC packs. It was a good eight months or so after the game was released before an ending that didn’t suck was added.

      So I’m more of the opinion that they legitimately thought that their original ending was good and there was nothing wrong with it, and then scrambled for a way to fix it when everyone (predictably) said they were nuts and should not be writing game stories.

  30. eljacko says:

    I loved Moira at first. My utter hatred for her didn’t really emerge until I was standing knee-deep in irradiated shit-water next to an active bomb, blushing furiously as passerby stared glassy-eyed at me, confused and perhaps worried about my sanity, as my slowly increasing radiation level removed my most treasured attribute: control over my bowels.

  31. Smurfferdid says:

    I have to say. This series (both this and mass effect) is highly entertaining and highly rage inducing for me at the same time. While you do bring up good points, and the jokes give me a chuckle. You also bring up inane points, and state “facts” when the game specifically contradicts them (Dad didn’t let in the radroaches, they just moved in from the lower areas because the overseer “turned out the lights” when he set up the alert). I’m not meaning to criticize. I know, “If you don’t like it don’t watch it” the thing is I do like it. But paradoxically it makes me angry. There a many things to complain about in this game. (I.E The ending, or the fact you were able to discuss the bomb without knowing it existed) Which entertain me. But you also seem to complain about many things which are only encountered through very very poor gameplay decisions or are completely inane. (I.E Dropping a few of the 24 extremely heavy vault suits you constantly picked up without regard for carrying capacity, and you still complained about VERY LIMITED “inventory management” which is barely existent and not at all “Most of the game”. Or the complaint that the game doesn’t hold your hand towards megaton, there’s a glowing compass symbol pointing you directly towards it) In lieu of all I’ve vented, Keep up the good work.

    TL;DR This “new guy”/long time lurker of both this site and Chocolate Hammer paradoxically both loves and is angry at Spoiler Warning, wants to see the series continue for a long while even though it makes him yell at the screen sometimes.

    P.S More Richard Nixon/Rutskarn please! He’s awesome!
    P.P.S I mean no ill will, as I know how much work goes into these videos. Wouldn’t want my first impression to be a bad one, though it probably already is.

  32. xXDarkWolfXx says:

    Justification for following your dad is like its said in DM of the rings “Fine, you guys stand around in the wilderness with nothing to do, because you refused to bite on the quest hook that will take you to the rest of the story.”

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